European Integration and Consensus Politics in the Low Countries

1. European Integration and Consensus Politics in the Low Countries Patrick Dumont University of Luxembourg University of Iceland – 27 June 2013 Small States Summer School

2. Based on material from Vollaard, H., Beyers, J. and Dumont, P. (eds) European Integration and Consensus Politics in the Low Countries, Routledge, forthcoming. In addition to the arenas and policies in this presentation, book contains chapters on parliaments, domestic EU coordination, bureaucracy, courts, interest groups, EU treaty ratifications and migration policy.

3. Main research questions How do small consensual member states respond to European integration? Are their response(s) shaped by consensual political institutions? Has European integration changed consensus politics in these countries?

4. Low Countries • Common history and remaining ties (Bel-Lux Economic Union 1921; Benelux Treaty 1944); • Founding members of European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1952 and Economic Community and Euratom (Treaty of Rome 1957); 3 smallest of the original 6; • Supranational institutions give disproportional weight to smaller countries (rotating presidency, veto power where unanimity, one commissioner) • Committed to European integration, Community method; not seen as threat by large member States; seats of institutions and personalities;

5. Consensus politics • Research on political stability of fragmented (societies deeply divided by one or more cleavages) West European democracies such as Neths and Bel; how come no civil war or democratic breakdown? • Lijphart (1975): cooperation among elites (at the top) of the religious, language and socio-economic organized subcultures (‘pillar’-organization of the segmented masses) to accomodate potential tensions: ‘consociational democracy’

6. Consensus politics • Blend of informal rules of the game and institutional characteritics that aim at eschewing decision-making by simple majority as possible, broaden the involvment in decision-making as widely as possible (not only in deeply divided societies) are referred as ‘consensus democracies’; • Lijphart identifies key indicators of consensus democracies such as executive power-sharing in grand (oversized) coalitions, proportional electoral systems, bicameralism, etc.

7. Consensus politics • Lijphart’s research since 1980s on (mainly institutional) characteristics of consensus vs majoritarian democracies (single party majority, first-past the-post system, unitary state, executive dominance over parliament, etc.) and their effects on policy outputs and outcomes; • Unlikely to change much through time as institutions are ‘sticky’; therefore, also unlikely to see a direct impact of European integration on how members states are formally organized;

9. Consensus politics • Ambition to study consensus politics as political practices (modes of doing politics) not at system-level (with country as unit of analysis) but disaggregate in different arenas and policy areas, across three countries; • Seek instances of inclusion, cooperative style and avoidance of decision-making by simple majorities even when there are conflicts; consensus politics does not mean prior widespread agreement but willingness to prevent or solve conflict by sharing power and compromise;

10. EI and Europeanization • European integration affects domestic policies, politics and polities of member states; • ‘Europeanization’ is a tricky concept, referring both to a process and an outcome to be measured (e.g. how europeanized is domestic agricultural policy?); • Also, not only a ‘top-down’ process as member states upload their preferences to EU level and participate to decisions then imposed on them;

11. Europeanization • Research mostly on how national policies are affected by implementation of EU regulations and directives; • Domestic institutions and actors (governments mainly, interest groups but now also parliaments, etc.) are increasingly implicated in EU policy-making and may therefore need to adapt their modes of functioning also on the domestic scene to perform these new roles;

12. Europeanization • There may be direct, tracable effects of EI on domestic policies, politics and polities but also more indirect effects such as on relations between central state and (some of its) regions (through Regional Funds), increased heterogeneity of small countries due to free movement of workers etc. • These indirect effects may be the most important but less easy to assess causality as there may be several other factors at work which may also be overlapping, e.g. globalization);

13. EI and consensus politics, - • If source of consensus politics is a threatening external environment, then EU as a monetary and security shield should remove threat and domestic elites would then have less incentives to seek consensus through sharing power; • If source of consensus politics is lack of exit options by actors locked in a national polity, EU provides new venues to be heard and may also put domestic cooperative style under pressure (e.g. Interest groups, regions)

14. EI and consensus politics, + • Small open economies, aware of being more vulnerable, helped create and sustain international institutions such as EU that fostered economic growth which helped domestic elites establish and maintain welfare state (through corporatist arrangements) and consensual growth-oriented policies (Katzenstein 1985; Milward 1995); • Even seen more negatively, EI may foster consensus politics as generous welfare state is needed to compensate for potential losers of European free trade (Jones 2008);

15. EI and consensus politics, = • Previous arguments counterbalanced, evolution through time of direct and indirect effects; • EU system itself is a variation of consensus politics, with issues depoliticized by experts, qualified or unanimity votes in Council, institutional triangle and powerful autonomous Court of Justice; good institutional fit with small compound democracies;

16. Exploratory research • Relationship between two multi-dimensional and debatable conceptual constructs; • Contradictory expectations on relationship; • Evolution through time of consensus politics (related or not to EI) and of ‘permissive consensus’ on EI in Low Countries; • Differential impact across arenas and policies and across countries;

17. Research design • Bottom-up, congruence analysis, starting with in-depth assessment of arenas and policy areas; • For each arena and policy area, comparison between consensual characteristics before 1990 and after (key EI moments Single European Act 1987; Maastricht 1993; change of generation of leaders) • Assessing propositions on impact of European integration in this later period and trends observed;

18. Governments • Pre-1990: oversized coalitions mainly in Neths and Bel but language issues explain the latter (constitutional constraints and party system split) whereas demominational conflict had led to single-party majority (resolution by School Pact); • Left 40% of voters unrepresented in government, only about 30% of the voters of the traditional pillar parties in Bel and Neths; despite minimal winning coalitions (MWC) in Lux, more of voters were represented in cabinet;

19. Governments • Large number of mechanisms designed to contain conflict; PM primus inter pares, decision-making in cabinet meetings by consensus not majority, comprehensive and detailed coalition agreements, constant monitoring by parties; • Propositions: 1) EI makes government participation more valuable because domestic executives gain power with regard to parliament => more MWC

20. Governments 2) Cabinet formation becomes more protracted among office-seeking parties and EU policy and commitments make delay less problematic for governance; 3) Coalition agreements gain in length and detail, because of mistrust between necessary partners who also want to isolate themselves from opposition influence and from external constraints; containment of EU factor within and outside of coalition agreement;

21. Governments • Proposition 1: • verified for Neths, not for Bel (oversized coalitions to reform state and prevent country dissolution; still a response to surge of majoritarian politics) and Lux (MWC become larger, non-minimum coalitions); • More voters are excluded from government (mainly in Neths) BUT not the case for pillar parties (more represented or same as before);

22. Governments • Proposition 2: Increase in formation duration in all countries (role of EI in allowing for that rather than causing that?); • Proposition 3: overall, increase in length of coalition agreements but ups and downs; role of EU in this trend observed by increase and then plateau-ing of EU issues in government agreements and importance of EU as source of government decisions outside of coalition agreement;

23. Saliency of EU in governmental declarations until 1990

24. Saliency of EU within external relations in governmental declarations until 1990

25. Sources of governmental decision, post-1990

26. Governments • Signs of increasing pressure on consensus politics in the three Low Countries, but Europeanization has mostly left the core elements of consensus politics in making and maintaining government coalitions intact; • Could have also looked at increasing hierarchization of cabinet and PM importance (presidentialization thesis) within cabinet but research on Low Countries does not indicate clear change; only one is more party leaders in cabinet;

27. Political Parties • Deep societal cleavages led to structuration of subcultural ‘pillars’ (trade unions, schools, mutual insurance, etc.) and strong (usually mass) parties to defend segments of society in cross-pillar elite accomodation; • Limited number of ‘coalitionable’, traditional, established parties: Catholics (dominant in government pre-1990), Socialists, and (lesser organized) Liberals;

28. Political parties • Ever since 1970s, de-pillarization especially in Neths, lesser role of parties as aggregating and representing interests of segments; • New parties born outside of this logic; • But all parties still need to accomodate organizationally various party circles, be inclusive of the diversity of party faces;

29. Political parties • Proposition 1: EI has induced ideological polarization on EU and this increased the power of EU specialists in parties; • Proposition 2: EI has increased the diversity of within-party players; • Proposition 3: leaders and specialists gain in power in governmental parties; more inclusiveness in non-governmental ones;

30. Political parties • Proposition 1: overall, level of attention and polarization of EU issues have increased (mainly in Lux and Neths); • Propositions 2 and 3: no broadening of decision-making regardless of type; some increase in power of party leaders but not EU specialists; • Very limited observed impact of EI, may be due to the fact that parties less exposed and dependent on EU resources; also change in structures may not come about due to intra-party dissenssions over EU;

31. Corporatism • Yet another concept, structure and system of policy-making in socio-economic policies in which social partners can intervene; small number of peak organizations recognized by government in institutionalized negotiations among themselves with government as third actor; • Here look at behaviour of governments, employers’ associations and trade unions in willingness to arrive at agreement;

32. Corporatism • Proposition 1: domestic consensus in corporatist arrangements has changed due to uploading and downloading of policy at the EU level; • Proposition 2: guidelines set up by EU on how to make decisions on socio-economic policy have reduced extent of agreement that can be achieved by corporatist policy formulation;

33. Corporatism • Specific process tracing of behaviour of actors in period of entry into Economic and Monetary Union (1993-5) with convergence criteria to be respected; and in 2008-2010 period of financial and economic crisis; • Proposition 1: core socio-economic policies (sucj as income policy) are still discussed at national level, no uploading to EU level by any of the actors that could endanger domestic process;

34. Corporatism • Proposition 2: guidelines have some effect (e.g. Maastricht criteria) on the content of domestic policies but even without EU, these policies (wage containment etc) have been seen as sound economic recipes in hard economic times; • More importantly, no effect on behaviour of social partners nor government with regard to willingness of agreement, nor on the actual outcome (agreements or not).

35. Corporatism

36. Conclusions and discussion • Domestic institutions and politics matter in the Europeanization of member states; • Domestic consensus politics may evolve with EI in the respective countries but no real sign of decay, nor evident signs of convergence (Bel process of federalization dominates agenda and energies; Neths more politicization of EU issues and elites’ attempts to remove these tensions);

37. Conclusions and discussion • We arrive at those results through careful process tracing and contextualized comparisons (that could fall prey of overstating change in our dependent variable and the impact of EU than what could be found with quantitative multivariate analyses);

38. What’s smallness got to do with it? • Link to consensus: For Lijphart’s second dimension on formal structure of countries (divided-power) between federal and unitary, small size is clearly linked to unitary (that is supposed to be a feature of majoritarian democracy but... this second dimension has no effect on ‘gentler and kinder’ policy outputs and outcomes; only the first dimension has); • Link to europeanization: research on domestic adaptations to EU pressure; but this pressure (X variable) may be different for smaller member states (differential treatment);

40. What’s smallness got to do with it? • Link to generalization of results: most of EU countries are now small to middle-sized; • Link to research design and causality: inclusion of non-EU cases in such a set-up (studying multiple arenas and policy areas) may be more feasible and would control for potential size effect (in domestic characteristics) to assess causality of EI impact on degree of consensus politics (most similar systems design);